A preliminary ruling has been issued in Samsara’s battle with Motive Technologies over alleged patent infringement.
U.S. International Trade Commission Judge Doris Johnson Hines determined that Motive does not infringe upon any valid Samsara patent claims, and no Section 337 (claims regarding intellectual property rights) violations were found.
Motive Chief Legal Officer Shu White said Samsara’s claims were an effort to stifle competition and disrupt Motive’s business.
“Knowing they were years behind on the AI front and losing major customers to Motive, Samsara attempted to close the gap by using patent litigation as a marketing tool. But the strategy failed,” Motive Founder and CEO Shoaib Makani wrote in a letter to customers following the ruling. “The Judge’s determination confirms what we have always known—Motive did not copy any of Samsara’s supposed inventions, and Motive’s AI technology is fundamentally better than Samsara’s.”
Samsara filed a lawsuit against Motive in January 2024, asking the court to enter judgment recognizing Motive’s infringement of the Samsara’s patents covering several of its solutions in fleet management and driver safety included within Samsara’s telematics, video-based safety and sustainability solutions. The filing also stated that Motive illegally accessed Samsara’s platform and copied Samsara’s marketing materials.
Samsara, in February 2024, followed that lawsuit with this complaint to the ITC, and Motive filed a countersuit against Samsara that same month. Samsara filed another ITC complaint in November 2024, alleging that Motive misappropriated trade secrets and confidential information.
The ITC has not issued its final determination yet, and those other legal proceedings are ongoing.
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Samsara shared this statement with CCJ: "We filed our litigation in response to Motive’s multi-year campaign, conducted by Motive’s CEO and senior leaders from Motive’s engineering and product teams, to copy Samsara’s technology. As part of that effort, Motive’s leadership team secretly created fake customer accounts to gain access to Samsara’s systems to study and copy our technology. There are various actions pending against Motive, including claims for unfair competition, trade secret theft, false advertising, breach of contract, and other patent infringement claims. This preliminary ruling in the ITC case does not impact our other ongoing legal actions against Motive, where we will continue to vigorously pursue our claims and ensure that Motive competes fairly and legally. The preliminary ITC ruling remains subject to review by the full Commission, and we are evaluating all options for further review."
